An MAGDM based on constrained FAHP and FTOPSIS and its application to supplier selection

The multiple attribute decision making (MADM) is widely used to rank alternatives with respect to multiple attributes. A new method for the multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) is proposed in this paper. In our method, linguistic terms are used during the whole evaluation process, the constrained fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is adopted to measure the relative importance of attributes, which is converted into the deterministic weight vector by using the extent analysis technique, the fuzzy TOPSIS is then used to rank the alternatives. With these improvements and other transformation skills, our new algorithm can better resolve the fuzzy information by decreasing its uncertain level, more scientific and accurate attribute weights can thus be obtained. More importantly, it can significantly reduce the computation amount and can provide more reasonable and robust ranking results. All these advantages are demonstrated by applying our new method to two supplier selection problems, typical complex MAGDM problems investigated extensively due to their practical importance. The sensitivity analysis and comparison with existing approaches sufficiently show the practicality, robustness and efficiency of our new algorithm, which can be applied to different kinds of complex MAGDM problems in reality. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.